


Pillow Talk and Hospital Corners

by proleptic_fancy



Category: Star Trek: Enterprise
Genre: F/M, M/M, POV First Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-09-15
Updated: 2008-09-15
Packaged: 2017-11-28 06:00:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/671090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/proleptic_fancy/pseuds/proleptic_fancy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Travis is a storyteller at heart.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pillow Talk and Hospital Corners

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: _Any character dealing with his/her bisexuality. Character should have had meaningful heterosexual *and* homosexual relationships in the past or present, but the relationships themselves don't have to be explored in depth._
> 
> I took a few liberties with this, but I hope you still have as much fun reading it as I did writing it.

I'll be the first to admit I'm no stranger to compromise. Kind of have to be, growing up on a ship with more people than rooms, but I like to think my mom taught me to be the kind of person who'll make a few personal sacrifices for the sake of shipboard harmony. However, this willingness extends exactly as far as the bedroom.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not talking about sex—I enjoy the give and take of a healthy relationship as much as the next guy. It's the part that always comes afterwards that's enough to drive me crazy every time. How in the hell are two people supposed to sleep, to actually lie down and sleep together without killing each other?

It all started way back on the _Horizon_. Now, any boomer worth his salt can tell you that the first rule of special transports is that don't fraternize with the passengers. Sure you can be friendly, answer their questions, and they _always_ got questions, about long-distance space travel, but the second it gets to be more than just a job, there's gonna be trouble.

I wish I had listened.

At first it was just a standard part of the run, a little longer than most people were willing to travel on an old boat like ours, but nothing too unheard of. All three desperate souls were originally supposed to get off at our first resupply stop three months in, but you know what they say about the best laid plans and all that.

Trish was the first girl we'd had on in ages, and she was a hell of a woman too. She seemed so smart and worldly to somebody like me, even if she'd only been off-planet once before her whole life. It started off innocent enough—she'd ask me what it was like to live among the stars, then end up telling me all about Earth, the home I'd never known. Three weeks later we were kissing in the corridors whenever I could escape from watchful eyes, and it was only a matter of time before I started sneaking her into my room.

Looking back, I'm pretty sure my dad knew about the whole thing—subtle wasn't exactly my strong point—but at the time I thought I was getting away with murder. Guess he figured some lessons were best learned the hard way.

Trish was the kind of girl that never stopped moving. At seventeen, I loved it. I loved watching her, and she loved knowing what she could do to me with a twitch of her hips or that little thing she did with her tongue when she was concentrating really hard on something. It paid off in the bedroom too, believe me, the things that girl could do with her hands.

It wasn't till later that I realized the downside of perpetual motion. I've never been the heaviest sleeper, no matter what lies my sister might have told you about Nausicaan raiders and a canister of liquid nitrogen, so I'm sure you can imagine the difficulty of being crammed into a bunk barely big enough for one with someone tossing and turning on top of you for six hours. You'd better believe I got my ass handed to me more than once for falling asleep on shift after that.

Oh, by the way, did I mention why Trish had only been off-planet once?

Space sickness.

In spite of all that, it still killed me to see her go, the full six months after we picked her up from that grungy little spaceport. The _Horizon_ didn't make it back to earth for almost two years after that trip, but I caught myself thinking about it more and more, even after the pain of losing Trish had faded into memory. I would spend hours on end trying to figure out a way to reconnect with my planetside roots without having to give up the only life I knew, and Starfleet seemed like the closest option I could find. Long story short, my family wasn't too happy about that, but twenty months later, there I was in San Francisco, ready to leave civilian life behind.

I have to admit, it wasn't easy at first. Too much gravity, too little oxygen, and nothing but open sky above me. Honestly, it was terrifying. Familiar, but just alien enough to leave me constantly on edge. The fact that it poured my entire first week there didn't help. Trust me, the novelty wears off real fast.

My roommate was sympathetic, at least, but he was from Maine, he couldn't really understand what I was going through those first few months. Luckily, he introduced me to someone who did. Don't get me wrong, I made friends from all kinds of places during my time in basic, but none of them got me quite like Syndric.

You have to understand, back on Earth, there are all kinds of crazy stereotypes about what us boomers are supposedly like. I tried to keep my head down, prove the whisperers wrong as much as I could, but Syndric seemed to enjoy living up to as many as humanly possible, even if not everyone was convinced he was entirely human. Suspicions aside, I could bore you for hours talking about everything I loved about Syndric Jain: the way he listened, the fact that he was built like a Greek statue, the granddaddy of all pranks we pulled on old Major Johansson, and that's not even mentioning his considerable off-duty talents either.

Still there's always a catch, even if it's only a little one, and sometimes the little things are all it takes. The snoring I could handle—even I'm supposedly guilty of that one. The clinging was another story. I know you must be thinking I'm crazy, but hear me out on this one. I'm not typically the type to be afraid of your average cuddle, but you have to realize Syndric had been the top performer in just about every physical challenge the instructors could inflict on us, and that kind of strength didn't just shut off when he fell asleep.

As much as I admired his skills in and out of the bedroom, having the life squeezed out of me every night wasn't exactly my idea of a good time. I wanted to talk to him about it, but I could never find the right words to say. Besides, do you know how hard it is to feel manly when you have to tell your boyfriend he hugs you too tight?  
So, I put up with it until I couldn't, and then I started making excuses. I know, I know, never said I was perfect over here, but that's the way things were. So, probably not a huge surprise when my excuses turned into his accusations, and one knock-down, drag-out fight later, we were finished.

Would I do things different if I could do the whole thing over? Probably, but things have a way of working themselves out for the best. Last I heard, Syndric was happily married and well on his way to a successful career in politics, and I think I'm doing okay too.

Still, that's hindsight for you. At the time I was crushed, even if I was pretty sure it was my fault. So, I did what any heartbroken twentysomething who's just been dumped would do and found myself a pretty girl. Gannet was a lot more than that, of course—can't say I've ever met someone who was so much fun to argue with—but at the time all I wanted was someone as different as Syndric as possible, and Gannet sure delivered.

At first I thought we were perfect. I'd finally met someone who understood the need for a good night's rest, relationship or no relationship, and was more than content to sleep peacefully on her own side of the bed, even if she stole my covers now and then. As it turns out, we needed more than just compatible bedroom habits to make things work, and some gaps just couldn't be bridged. Things had been going bad for a while, as much as we both tried to ignore it, but when I got the _Enterprise_ job, the one I'd been dreaming of since those lonely nights in my cabin on the _Horizon_ , we couldn't take the strain anymore.

As break-ups go it was quiet, and maybe in a different situation things would have worked out, but like I said before, life always has a way. See, I was already friends with Malcolm by the time Gannet and I finally ended it, and, well, I'm sure you know how that one turned out.

So here I am, folding hospital corners before my shift. Personally, I can't stand the things, the way they pin you down like that, but I think they make Malcolm feel safe. We've got a pretty good thing going, the two of us, and I like to think I've grown enough as a person not to mess with it over hospital corners. Sure we aren't perfect—if my mistakes have taught me anything, it's that expecting perfection only lets you down that much faster—but I'm happy, and even though it's not always easy to tell, I think Malcolm's happy too. It's like with these sheets. He's never gonna say anything, but it's enough that after a double shift fighting with a targeting sensor that's almost as stubborn as he is, they're there, tucked in all snuggly and claustrophobic. And you know, I think that's enough for me too.


End file.
